


Arrariv (My Word)

by MotherInLore



Series: Slayers West [4]
Category: Always Coming Home - Ursula K. Le Guin, Slayers (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Crossover, Culture Shock, Philosophy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-22
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-10 01:36:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6932569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MotherInLore/pseuds/MotherInLore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A long walk provides plenty of time for a long argument.  Takes place after "A Man of Coyote's House."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Vocabulary

**Author's Note:**

> "My Word" or "My words" is the literal translation of the Kesh word "Arrariv" (Yes, Ursula LeGuin went ahead and invented a language for _ACH_ and I am grateful.) I tend to think that this and the other Kesh words in this series sound better if you follow the Spanish pronunciation rules. The name "Wehisho" would be "Like a Swallow," in Kesh.

Amelia was very firmly looking on the bright side. Wehisho told them that even with the time they'd spent waiting around, taking the boat to Tuberhuny, and then the one from Tuberhuny to the Easy River, had still cut easily a month off their travel time, since now they had only flatlands to cross. It was hard not to wish someone had been willing to go clear to Choum-Rekwit, though. Even on the flatlands, they had to keep detouring up or down to avoid marshes or planted fields, or, in one case, an area that Wehisho insisted was poisoned, though it didn't look any different. None of the three rivers they would have to cross had fords or ferries in a straight line from each other, either.

The journey was further slowed by questions of etiquette. While it would have been a matter of great shame to the local people to turn away a guest, it was also understood that none of the small farms or ranches they passed were really prepared on short notice to accommodate five people (or seven, counting Fefinum the mule and Xellos, who for some reason was tagging along on foot as if he actually needed to,) plus extra for Lina and Gourry-san. Therefore, even if they were going to be staying in a town, rather than camping in the open, they spent part of the day gathering food. Amelia had learned to recognize sorrel, amaranth, dock, wild fennel, and, by the waterways, cattail sprouts and camas bulbs. Like Wehisho-san, she had taken to carrying a sack with her that she could fill as they walked along. Zel-san, grumbling, allowed himself to be saddled with the sole responsibility for gathering and removing spines from any pads of prickly pear they came across. They came across fewer of those as they headed north. This region was a desert only in comparison to the area around Seyruun.

Gourry was unable to remember any plants except (after one painful incident) poison oak, and Lina refused to try. However, they were both fairly good hunters. On one particularly exciting day, Wehisho had pointed out a lot of little soft piles of dirt in a field and explained that they marked the burrow holes for something called a 'himpi.' A few buckets-full of water poured into one of the holes, plus some rapid spell work from Lina-san, and they had captured a full dozen fat, furry little creatures like short-legged, earless rabbits. Amelia had at first been a little dismayed at the idea of eating anything so cute, but that had ebbed when she smelled the meat on the roasting spit a short time later. The stew they made with the leftovers and ate next morning was even more delicious.

There was a kind of music to their slow progress north: Making camp and breaking it down, footsteps, insects, birdsong that was gradually becoming familiar, and even their conversations took on a rhythmic character. Amelia found herself listening to certain pet phrases as if they marked the start of a new variation in a concert piece: Gourry-san's “Huh?” Lina's answering “Nnrrgh!,” or “Oi!” Sighs, mostly, from Zel-san. From Xellos, came “My, my!” and “well...” Wehisho-san had pointed out that Amelia's own, “Um, excuse me? Everyone?” had the same pattern to it as the call of a quail-like bird she called 'Ekwerkwe.” Wehisho and Fefinum were practically their own orchestra section. In the morning, there were Fefinum's grumbling brays and creaking harness, Wehisho's answering (Zel-san said) swearwords, and then, in the first few days, long, repetitive songs in Kesh that Amelia couldn't get out of her head even a week after Wehisho had, (under threat of Fireballs from Lina-san) stopped singing them. And like the rest of them, Wehisho had pet phrases. “Indeed,” and “Ohu?” in conversation. And, not quite at random, “arrariv.”

Wehisho said “arrariv,” when she stepped on a spider, when she picked a sprig of mint, at the end of a song she sang when she was fishing, when she slapped at mosquitoes. Amelia finally grew curious enough to ask her what it meant.

“It's a pebble-word. We say, 'the pebble contains the mountain.' So, if you're killing somebody like a whole tree full of apples, or a deer, you sing one of the death songs. But if you're just killing one tomato, or one spider, you say, 'arrariv,' and that maintains the relationship.“

“My, my!” The others eyed Xellos warily. There was a kind of edge to him when he talked to Wehisho, and had been ever since the first time they'd all tried to explain the Descent of the Demons, from Lord Shabranigdo on down the ranks, and the muleteer had been unable to stop laughing; mostly, it seemed, at the very concept of an “Army of Chaos.”

“The earth is round, the sky is round,” she'd sung, “Go straight on, straight on southwest, go straight on, you'll come around northeast of where you were...” in her normal (except for the giggles) speaking voice, she'd added, “so you have protectors that destroy and chaos with slaves in it. Are your heads on backwards?” 

“Ah, but you fail to understand, Swallow-san. We mazoku are not slaves. We are loyal to our cause and to our leaders, out of our own will. And our loyalty, like our power, is stronger than most humans are capable of.”

“Ohu? Like a sheepdog's?” Wehisho had looked doubtful.

“You, yourself, called me one of Coyote's people.”

“Coyote isn't a warrior.”

“Is that so?”

Wehisho had been silent, but it had been a very full silence, and since then her questions had become more probing. As had the mazoku's.

“So,” he said now, “Arrariv means, more or less, 'thank you for dying.' And do your people consider that to be an adequate exchange?”

“Exchange...” Wehisho pondered. “The Blood Lodge teachings don't talk about it in terms of payment. We're expressing gratitude for a gift and affirming the relationship between ourselves and the other people in the world.”

“A relationship where they die and you thank them? Seems a bit one-sided; maybe even...” Xellos pursed his lips, “authoritarian.” His tone was needling. It reminded Amelia somehow of the way he'd poked at Filia, the last time they'd all been together in the Outlands. But Wehisho-san hadn't been calling Xellos names the way the dragon had, and the undercurrents were harder to read. _Maybe he's just bored._

Wehisho was either guilelessly deaf to the accusation, or very good at pretending to be so. “Most of the time, in the nine towns, the people we kill are ones that live with us in our households, so of course the relationship is much more complicated. But that is one of the reasons that working with the Finder's Lodge is so dangerous, you see; it is harder to remain mindful when you don't know the people you are with.”

Well, that was enough to make Amelia nervous. It didn't matter how many times she reminded herself that their guide used the word 'people' to refer to just about everything that hadn't been manmade, including rocks, deer, bodies of water, and olive trees. The lack of distinction startled Amelia every time, and now that Wehisho-san was talking about “killing people in our households,” it was very difficult indeed to remember that she meant things like beans, squash, and the occasional chicken. _I don't know why Xellos-san doesn't like her. It seems like this would be right up his alley_.

Xellos, however, was not diverted. “Do you imagine the sheep and the corn think it's fair? If a bear or a puma thanked you for dying before it ate you, would you feel better about it?”

This got an appreciative chuckle from his opponent. “Well, _I_ like being surprised better than being afraid, so I suppose I would feel better, briefly. But you keep omitting the context. If I were walking on Ama Kulkun, 'on the hawk's way,' as we say, when I met this bear, then I would be in her house. If the same bear went crazy and crashed through the doors of Five Toads House, or dug her way into the Serpentine heyimas, that would indeed be a different matter.”

“Hmmm...” Xellos had not opened his eyes, but his smile had grown toothier. “And would you then be willing to die on a chicken's behalf, or a tree's?”

“You're thinking like a warrior,” Wehisho observed. Her tone of voice was pitying, a verbal pat on the head. “If heroism on that scale has become necessary, there has been a serious failure of mindfulness somewhere.” Her eyes narrowed. “You seem to be trying to prove that I am inconsistent in my principles, but making rules and then following them mindlessly is childish and lazy. The world is remade nine times every heartbeat, and the center moves. If you don't change direction now and then you won't be able to find it.”

Xellos' eyes flashed purple, briefly as a diving kingfisher's blue. “The center does not much interest me, unless I can use it as a fulcrum.” And then the blank smile returned. It wobbled a bit around the edges, though. “Come now, Swallow-san, don't go lecturing a man a hundred times your age; it makes you look silly.” 

It was always hard to tell when the mazoku was really on edge and when he was simply acting as though he was, but either one could be dangerous. Amelia surreptitiously moved within casting range of Wehisho-san, in case she needed to put up a shield. She could only hope the Lord Beastmaster's Lieutenant wasn't offended enough to do everything he _could_ do.

Wehisho's own voice became edged, and her smile sharpened. “Well, but you've been a warrior for most of that, you say, and warriors mostly are very poorly educated. As, of course, are slaves.” 

“Do not. Call me. A slave.” Purple eyes glared steadily.

_Oh gosh, he isn't even smiling! This is bad..._ Amelia realized that Lina and Zel-san had moved beside her, and that they, too, were ready to throw up shields, or maybe just knock Wehisho-san out of the way of the first bolt.

“Oh, but I didn't! I called you a warrior.” Wehisho-san's opinion of warriors was not high, and her tone, though careless-sounding, was not placating. She shrugged. “There are some similarities, that's all. I just happened to think of them.” 

The ruby on Xellos' staff began to emit a shadowy aura. Lina stepped up hastily, waving her hands. “Hey, hey, you two! Cut it out already! Wehisho, no teasing the mazoku. Xellos, no zapping our guide until she takes us where we're going. Let's talk about something else, okay? What should we have for lunch? And don't tell me 'grasshoppers' again! Those were disgusting.”

Xellos bowed himself away as Lina and Gourry started pulling dried meat and journey bread out of their packs. Wehisho picketed Fefinum and showed Amelia a patch of dead-looking plants that turned out to have edible seeds that could be shaken out of them.

Amelia realized her hands, too, were still a little shaky. “You really shouldn't make Mister Xellos mad, Wehisho-san,” she warned. “It's easy to forget how evil he is, but he's really very dangerous.”

Wehisho's teeth flickered white in her dark face: a fleeting grin. “I think I won this round, though.” 

“Wehisho-san...”

“You want to watch your assumptions, Wehisho.” Zelgadis came up behind them. “That's one of his favorite tricks, going along with other people's mistaken impressions until it's too late.”

“What do you mean?”

Zel blew out his breath in a sigh. “Well, you know Lina calls Xellos her 'handy item,' but he would kill her without a qualm if he'd get something worthwhile out of it. I remember one time – this was one of the weirder ones – where there was this girl who decided she was in love with him and they were going to get married. He just let her go on thinking so, and sort of nudging her into making trouble for him, until she found out what kind of monster he really was... Kind of the way he never says anything when you talk about him being 'one of Coyote's people.' I don't know who your Coyote is, but you shouldn't assume Xellos is loyal to her.”

Wehisho snorted. “If he was, I'd be _certain_ he was crazy. Listen, there are the wild coyotes, you know, but the Coyote who is mother of the House of the Winds is a metaphor, or a symbol. She lives in the Houses of the Sky. Loyalty isn't what she's _for_.” She sagged, turning back toward the clearing where Lina and Gourry sat. “The thing about Xellos that bothers me is that he seems to be a Sky person who acts like an Earth person. Sky people make mischief, to be sure, but not excuses. He shouldn't... all those times he says he will or won't do something because his superiors say so – that's a slave's way of thinking. I would have said a slave or a warrior couldn't be a Sky person. Warriors are outermost from the center, cold and disengaged, outside the world... the Sky people _are_ the center. I didn't think it was possible to be both. The roads go in opposite directions; how could anyone walk them at the same time? But,” she admitted with a rueful half-smile, “that is _exactly_ the kind of thing Coyote's people do. And so we go 'round again, in the other direction.” She shook her corkscrew curls and groaned, comically. 

Amelia shook seedheads into her gathering bag and let the subject drop. She still had the feeling that Wehisho-san was getting something wrong, something important, but she had no idea what she could say that would correct her.


	2. What Xellos Knows  About the Lost Cities

Hostilities did not resume until late in the evening of the next day. The north bank of the Cheden river was more densely populated; marsh and reedbeds made way for a patchwork of fields and little round houses, all of them containing people who were happy to talk the strangers making their way from the Klingawats Ford down to the Haibob Trail that led north. A settlement called Sheff had an established way-station or caravansarai, empty at the moment, with thin-walled but watertight shelters, a well, and brick firepits for cooking. Wehisho slipped away after dinner and emerged from one of the little round houses carrying several knobby roots. “This is soaproot; you can cook it, or wash your hair with it; which do you want?” 

After days of slogging, everyone decided on a wash, even if it had to be done standing up, using buckets heated on the fire. One by one, they drifted back to the firepit again. Lina declined Wehisho's offer to help comb her hair. Wehisho's didn't completely stop curling even when soaking wet, but it seemed to have doubled in length. “This is the first time I've spent that much time out in the wild without picking up a tick somewhere,” she observed, thoughtfully, “Thank you, all you no-house people, for keeping the many-legged people away!”

“Oh, it was nothing!” Amelia told her, politely. “Lina-san, did those people you were buying the fish from earlier have anything interesting to say?” 

“Nothing we haven't heard before,” Lina yawned and stretched. “A little more about the wars when the Condor People tried to expand their territory fifty years ago, and somebody else mentioned the Lost Cities. And just like always, the don't know or care anything about the Lost Cities at all, except that they were there. That's weird, ya know? I mean, usually if there's a Lost City, there's all kinds of legends and stuff about it.”

“There are indeed stories,” Wehisho objected. “But you keep asking about treasures, and the stories about the Time Outside the World aren't about treasures. Not in the Na Valley, at least; I think it's the same elsewhere. Those stories are for warning children, or for giving people the shivers at night in the summerhouses.” 

“The lost cities... were evil?” Amelia asked. Crickets were beginning to chirp, and the air grew cool. Amelia wrapped herself in a coat she'd bought, quilted and stuffed with milkweed floss. It was lighter than a featherbed, though she'd been warned it wouldn't keep her warm if it was wet, the way wool would. Gourry was sharpening his sword, and the rhythmic hiss of the whetstone joined the crickets and the crackle of the fire.

“The people's heads were indeed on backward.” Wehisho told them.

“Not literally,” Xellos was suddenly there, one more shadow amongst the shadows. “They weren't even evil, by your standards, Amelia-san.”

“You know about them?”

“Of course! I came out here once or twice, before the war became...overt.”

“Tell us more!” Lina demanded, leaping up and darting out into the dark to shake Xellos by the collar. “Tell us more right now!”

“My, my, Lina-san, so impetuous!” But he slid himself into the firelight and began to talk. “There were actually many cities, all up and down the hills and valleys, close together as cells in a honeycomb. The Cities of Loss, and the Cities of Sann, all living together in peace and harmony.” His smile flashed in the firelight. “Mostly.”

“Did they have treasures?” Lina's eyes glittered, greedily.

“Of course!” Xellos spread his hands in an expansive gesture. “The people in the Valley of Glass knew how to put a thousand libraries, knowledge to rival – well, maybe not the Claire Bible, but still impressive – in a window the size of your hand. The people in the Valley of Angels could carve a silver plate, and if you knew how, you could use that plate to make a roomful of people dream the same dream... and that was just the beginning.” He glanced sideways at Wehisho, who sat hugging her knees and staring stonily into the fire. When no one said anything, he went on. “They were miraculous healers, Wehisho-san, these … monsters of yours. That technique you went to Klatsaand to learn? Using small doses of poison to stop muscles from spasming? They knew that one. They knew how to cure cancers of the blood, how to keep a baby alive when it had been born two moons early, or had a malfunctioning heart...”

Wehisho did not move, or look away from the fire. “There's your answer then,” she said softly, her voice flat.

“Answer?” The mazoku cocked his head.

“To the question you asked yesterday, about when humans die for the sake of the other people we live with.” Wehisho's fingers twisted the ends of her sash, and her eyes glimmered with unshed tears. “You left a few things out of your story, warrior. Like the way the backwards-head people bred like himpi, filling up the world until there was nothing but them and their slaves. They enslaved the rivers to power their machines, enslaved the dirt to force it to grow food for more and more of them, poisoned hillsides to save babies that were born dying. We don't do that here, in this time. So the ones whose sickness we don't cure, the fetuses we abort or never conceive, those deaths leave room for the chickens and the trees and the coyotes and the rivers, all the people together in the houses of the earth.”

Lina interrupted with a hearty slap on Wehisho's back. “Aww, stop moping. That was all a long time ago, right? Hey, Xellos! Do you think we might find any of those ancient treasures if we went looking for them?”

“I don't see why not.” He pondered, fingering his chin. “A surprising amount of the ancient knowledge from those cities seems to have survived, in a somewhat... distorted form. I've recognized spell fragments in some of the songs I overheard, even though no one here has done magic since the War. I can't think why a few physical artifacts might not have survived as well.”

“Perfect!” Lina pulled out a map. “Show me where the biggest city was, with the best stuff.”

“Hmm...” a white glove hovered and then settled. “Right... here.” Lina, Gourry, Amelia, and Zelgadis all crowded around. The finger was pointing at the middle of the Inland Sea.

“The Cities were underwater?” Gourry asked.

“Not at the time.”

“What... happened?” Amelia had seen tsunamis before; changes of shorelines, but a whole new sea... mountains changed to islands... she could barely comprehend it. Did the Gods decide to smite the cities? _Were they evil the way Wehisho-san thinks? Were they good and the mazoku attacked them?”_ Then she chided herself for being simplistic. The battle between Good and Evil almost never worked itself out that clearly.

“No idea!” Xellos shrugged cheerfully. “It was all still here when I left. Maybe the Deep Sea Dolphin did something during the wars.”

“Ohu, what's this war you people keep talking about?” Wehisho demanded. 

So they tried to explain it to her again. Cepheid and Shabranigdo, the monsters and the dragons. “In a way,” Zelgadis told her, “It's the great war- the one between light and darkness, creation and destruction. The war at the heart of the world.”

Wehisho sprang away from them, eyes wide with panic, nearly sobbing. “You people really are crazy! War can't live in the heart of the world. There is no war there!” Her fists were balled at her sides.

“Oh, trust me, Swallow-san,” came Xellos' voice, lightly, from the other side of the fire. “There is a war. A very old one.”

Wehisho spat into the fire, making it hiss. “I'm sure there is. Between the mazokude and those other people you were talking about, there will indeed be war as long as you keep making it. But there is no war between light and darkness. That is not a war; it is a dance. Pretending otherwise is nothing but egotism.”

Xellos, too, sprang back, levitating about five feet in the air. He clutched his staff like the weapon it was, and his face twitched. But he still managed to keep his tone of voice light and smooth. “My, my, you sound very certain. A dance, you say? Where did you learn this?”

“The same place I learned that water flows downhill!” Wehisho answered, disgusted, “In darkness is the shining, and in the light we see by shadows. How could it be otherwise? Everyone in the valley knows the dance.”

“Ah, yes, the valley, where everyone is wise and lives in the right way. Of course, the valley _must_ be perfect! That is why you spend so much of your time there!

Wehisho rubbed her eyes.”We are not perfect. We don't have to be, for this. The truth is there to see unless you turn your head from it. But you, it seems,” Wehisho glared at them all impartially, “you are too lazy to see or listen to the real world, so you make one up where war is the only thing that matters and all you have to do is obey your chief.”

Xellos screamed, abruptly pop-eyed and furious: “Lazy? _Lazy!?!_ Eat fractals, you puny, ephemeral, pig-ignorant – _sheep!”_ The last word came out in a metallic shriek, and a bolt of black lightning shot from the end of his staff toward Wehisho's feet.

She didn't seem to notice, though her hair, suddenly dry, made a crackling cloud around her head. She flung a rock at him and shrieked back: “It is you who are ignorant! _Tavpoye_ is speaking you, and you won't listen to anything but sickness. I don't think you've made a choice of your own in nine hundred years, and you still don't think you're enslaved!” Wehisho spun away and stomped off toward the stable. It seemed Fefinum, in addition to her other functions, was to serve as a comforter of the afflicted.

Xellos, too, took himself elsewhere after that. The other four stayed by the fire.

“Nnrrgh!” Lina clutched her hair. “Isn't one crazy pacifist enough?”

“Actually,” Zelgadis observed, “Amelia hasn't been nearly that bad lately.”

“Hey!” 

“Well, you haven't! Five years ago you were just awful.” Zel shuddered theatrically.

The fire popped. Eucalyptus wood smelled lovely, but it burned noisily right down to the coals. Lina shook her head, slowly. “Amelia always kinda made sense, though. I'm not even sure what those two,” she waved a vague hand toward the stable, “were arguing about.”

“Wasn't it about sheep?” Everyone looked at Gourry, briefly, then went back to ignoring him.

Zelgadis puffed out a sigh. “I'm just glad they _are_ arguing,” he said. 

“Huh?”

The chimera sighed again, rolled his shoulders, and prepared to lecture: “Look. One of Wehisho's blind spots is that she thinks mazoku are, or should be, scavengers. If they were scavengers, they'd go along one at a time or in small groups, and feed on whatever negative emotions occur naturally, and then move on... like buzzards or crows, or Wehisho's coyotes. If that were really how it worked, that 'healer' label she slapped on Xellos the first time they met almost makes sense. But the mazoku are predators.”

“Yeah, so? We know that, Zel. But why are you glad that Xellos and Wehisho don't get along?” Personally, Lina thought the only good thing about it was that, so far, they hadn't gone around destroying pieces of the landscape when they crossed swords. Or words.

“Because,” Zelgadis said, “if he found Wehisho's notions less insulting, Xellos would probably let her go on thinking he's harmless. Suppose, when she called him a slave, he'd decided to go all whiny and pitiful-looking, and then told her that if she'd just help him get the Sword of Light he'd be free to do whatever he wanted... she'd be a sitting duck.”

“When you put it that way...” Lina didn't usually dwell much on those few incidents in the past where she had been, temporarily of course, at a disadvantage, but she remembered what Martina had gotten up to, with Xellos' encouragement. “I'm glad Wehisho doesn't have any magic powers,” she concluded.

“Oh, doesn't she?” Gourry asked, forehead wrinkling.

“Of course not!”

“Oh....”

Zelgadis cocked his head. “Why did you think she might, Gourry?”

The big man faltered. “Well, when Xellos zapped her just now it didn't seem to do much.” He shrugged. “But, maybe he just missed. Or he was just trying to scare her.”

It took the rest of them a long time to get to sleep after that.


	3. Harvest

The Haibob trail proved to be narrow and poorly maintained. The main trade routes here were all by water, only it seemed no one was going that way. By noon, Lina had used small fireballs to clear three separate blockages where the dense, chest-high scrub had taken over the walking path, and had been narrowly prevented from doing so a fourth time.

“Lina, no!” Wehisho had cried,”That's poison oak! And we're downwind!”

Gourry had immediately wrapped one of his arms over Lina's mouth and grabbed both her wrists in one massive hand, and kept her there until she promised not to throw any flames. After that, she'd been willing to listen when Wehisho explained that the substance that made poison oak itch was not affected by heat, “So you really, really don't want to breath that smoke, truly you don't,” she'd finished.

In the end, they had to Levitate over the accursed thing. Lina carried Gourry, Amelia carried Wehisho, and then Lina went back and she and Zelgadis together contrived to shift a squalling, panicked Fefinum. Lina insisted that Zelgadis take the back end since he wouldn't be as badly injured by the creature's powerful kick. Afterward, Zel insisted that Lina help him clean his clothes, which were badly stained by Fefinum's third (after kicking and biting) line of defense. Xellos' assistance in the whole charade consisted of attempting to muffle his giggles as he watched them from midair, some distance away. "I couldn't possibly help," he told them. "I'm far too lazy."

Wehisho eventually managed to calm the mule. She apologized to Zelgadis, and thanked Amelia for carrying her, but mostly she was not inclined to be sociable. She and Fefinum stayed at the back of the group, so that Gourry's sword-practice on the bits of chaparral that impinged on the trail didn't alarm her friend further. Wehisho wasn't entirely happy with their traveling companions either, and she wanted to sort out her thoughts.

 _Of course, the valley_ must _be perfect! That is why you spend so much of your time there!_

The words were the wrong words: a deliberate (surely they were deliberate?) misinterpretation of a complicated relationship. Too stupid to be a real insult, or a real joke. But the wound they touched was real. As they all pushed their way through scrub oak and wild lilac along the Haibob Trail, the words still echoed in Wehisho's mind, along with other, older ones:

_You're making up the world, my romantic daughter. Why do you think other people have secrets we don't?_

_Isn't riding in the Summer games enough?_

_Isn't learning at the exchange enough?_

_Cats my be green somewhere else, but the cats here don't care._

_Isn't working with the mules on the Line enough?_

Wehisho needed the valley, there at the center. Needed the pattern of the _wakwade_ , the songs, the souls' way, the people who knew her through and through. She needed a center to turn on, to return to. She saw the world in the valley's light. But the valley, as far as she could tell, did not want very much of what she had to give in return.

_You chase novelty the way old Manzanita chases wine, niece. You came inland two years ago; it's time to start settling down!_

_What do you think you're looking for? You'll follow your dreams right into Bear's house, if you aren't careful._

_Cats may be green somewhere else...._

Wehisho had never found the way to explain her deep certainty that curiosity was valuable in and of itself. The world is here, she tried to tell them, the whole world! Just look at it!

_Cats may be green somewhere else..._

_Do you need a bringing-in, my daughter?_

Maybe she did. Maybe she was lost and didn't know it, walking here on the wrong coast of the Inland Sea, her companions a lot of backward-headed power-seekers even more lost than she was, plus one Coyote on a leash, foaming at the mouth with _tavpoye_ , the Warriors' Disease, that Sky people weren't supposed to be be able to catch. _These people are dangerous_ , she thought. _The center is moving, and I'm afraid..._

_Cats may be green somewhere else..._

Wehisho was fed up with the whole tangle. She and her family had been walking in this circle together for years, and the only thing that changed was the ruts got deeper. Circle out to adventure: pain, loneliness, the fear of exile. Circle back to the valley: comfort, community, the fear of stagnation. Turn away, turn back. Keep the balance around the middle. But there were teachings in the Doctors' Lodge, secret ones only the experienced _dweshude_ were supposed to know in detail, about the two kinds of pain: the one you tried to end, and the one you had to move through. _Fine, then. Let's see if this pain has something on the other side of it. Here, you sick dog, you, take what I have to give! No one else wants it!_

****

Xellos was used to stealing his food. Perhaps, really, stealing wasn't the correct term, but it had a nice, exciting feel to it, a certain panache. Certainly, for something that so few humans said they wanted, his favorite nourishment required a lot of effort to acquire. The strongest human emotions were so fleeting. They had to be teased or startled out of cover and caught on the run. The sweetest, slow-ripening ones like hatred were harder yet, buried under surface optimism, comforting delusions, happy memories... and humans tended to cling to them, using that dense energy to drive themselves along roads (often, admittedly, quite useful ones) of their own choosing. It took a lot of careful work to bring naked hatred up to the surface, and usually if one bothered, one of the Greater Ones was involved somewhere and naturally took their own share of the feast, leaving nothing but a few crumbs of horror and shock for their servants.

Well, it was all part of the game. Over the centuries, Xellos had grown adept at startling aggression and resentment out of their nests, of threading tiny, sweet, berries of grief and guilt from dense briars of love. The Inverse and her companions were pretty reliable thickets to hunt. The Swallow from the valley, however, was not, and the challenge had stopped being a game sometime back. It wasn't only her habit of insulting him, though that wasn't exactly fun. In among her ridiculous misunderstandings and blithe mistaken certainties, she'd given voice to a few truths that were closely guarded secrets even among the mazoku. And she'd said them as if they were things everybody knew. 

That was not a combination he was going to leave to develop as chance led. Obscurely, he now felt he had something to prove. He'd tried poking her in the usual places – the ones that had worked so well on Filia once upon a time, and stirred up nothing but spore-clouds of confusion, smug (if mistaken) pity, and, of course, curiosity. The pity itched. It was all he could do to keep from sneezing. And yet there was fear, in there somewhere, and all the hearty old family drama staples, all with a new and unfamiliar flavor to them, as if a human dish had been cooked with fennel instead of onion. And he'd be blessed by the Cepheid Knight before he allowed himself to be defeated by a... a sheep. 

The previous night had really been quite... rewarding. In memory, Xellos dwelled on the satisfaction of realizing that the Swallow's predilection for certain barbs when she argued – questions of freedom and loyalty – were an indication that she knew those were weapons that hurt, which meant, of course, that those were the ones to use on her. He would not exacerbate the his chagrin at failing to notice this obvious point for so long by acknowledging it, nor degree that those same weapons had stung him. Those feelings were for prey. And this prey would finally crack any time now, he could smell it.

****

Wehisho made herself breathe quietly, not sobbing, but she let the tears well, naming each old sorrow and new fear as it arose.

_Adsevin will always be the favorite daughter._

_I don't know what I'm doing. Something has gone wrong, somewhere._

_Uvron will never love me and, for that matter, never really did. I was just his rebellion._

_Even Aunt Eucalyptus doesn't really want to bring me in as I am. She wants me to turn from a Swallow into a Chicken._

One by one, she let them fall away. Each one left her with an almost tangible snap: the weight pulling and then releasing, leaving a tiny sliver of pain, like air hitting the barely-healed skin under a bandage. And after those last sparks, stillness, and a kind of clarity.

 _Here. now._  
_Now I am_  
_here, I am, now_  
_Now, I am  
_Here.__

****

A weight was pressing into Xellos' hands (not that they _were_ hands) in the astral dimensions. His head was suddenly and dizzyingly full of the scent of apples.

 _Here. now._ The words had no voice or origin, but the branch was bent to his palm, full of heavy, sweet fruit. His astral fingers closed instinctively and it came away with a faint snap- he didn't even have to tug. And here was another, and another, full and juicy enough to slake hunger and thirst both...

He had sufficient mastery of himself that even in the midst of the giddy, sensory delight of it, he still had room to register his own surprise. And the irony of the situation. Even in her defeat, Wehisho had a point to prove. _Making a healer of me whether I will or no, neh, Swallow-san? It's different, I'll give you that..._

Picked clean, slim green branches sprang away from him, reaching skyward.

*****

Xellos' careless, velvety voice broke the silence of miles. “You are indeed a generous woman, Swallow of the Serpentine.” 

What? Amelia turned and walked backward. The Kesh woman looked just awful. Her eyes were puffy and red, her face streaked with tears and dust – _has she been crying all this time? She kept it so quiet! What did Xellos-san do to her?_ Amelia tensed, ready to administer the Fist of Justice as soon as she knew what she was punishing him for.

Whatever Xellos had done, though, had not broken Wehisho completely, because she flashed a wry, sideways smile, and her voice didn't shake at all. “You're not much of a _dwesh,_ Coyote's Son, but any pond in a wildfire....”

Xellos' answering grin was even sharper. “ _Arrariv_ ,” he said. 

“What was all that about?” Lina-san demanded, and got no answer. Zelgadis looked back, frowned briefly at both mazoku and muleteer, and then frowned straight ahead, occasionally muttering under his breath.

They walked another ten minutes before Zelgadis' head snapped up again and he turned to glare at Wehisho, who blinked at him. “ _Ulllgghh!_ ” he said, and shuddered. He, too, refused to explain.

**Author's Note:**

> I guess this story is the place to geek out about combining timelines, since the topic of the Lost Cities comes up again. _Always Coming Home_ takes place "in California a long, long time from now," after Western Civilization has collapsed and the survivors have developed up into tribes and City-States again. Slayers takes place.... whenever. Plunking _ACH_ down into the Outlands leaves some visible seams here and there. The timeline for the end of the U.S and the rise of the cultures around the Omorn Peninsula has been compressed down to about 2500 years, if Xellos is being exact when he tells Wehisho he's a hundred times her age. I think in canon it's closer to 10,000, though LeGuin is carefully imprecise. This would also imply that the development of magic as practiced in _Slayers_ was more rapid than they realize. 
> 
> OK, geek moment over. Looky! Here's two of my favorite stories, describing very different cultures and mindsets, and the characters therein would not understand each other at all! Let's put them together and watch the fun! Road Trip!


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